Flashes of insight from the Everyman. Weekly observational posts. Part comedy, part philosophy, part temper tantrum, Lightning Bug's Butt is always good for a laugh and/or a place to send your hate mail.
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1/12/2007

Bullet-ins

**A man's man and a ladies' man are both pretty cool things to be, even though they sound like opposites. Also cool: being a girly girl, if you're a girl. No word yet on a man's lady. We'd have to ask Rosie O'Donnell.

**I'm sorry about the infrequent posts lately. I've been busy. After Justin brought sexy back, I had to mix it into a batter and bake all the sexy cupcakes. Bon appetit.

**Courts spend a lot of time and energy considering whether something is offensive without first considering whether it's true. If it's true, it shouldn't matter whether it's offensive. If it does, we've got an ugly future coming down the pike.

**The anti-tobacco people could move their agenda a lot quicker if instead of calling it second-hand smoke, they called it second-mouth smoke. It's more accurate and more gross.

**The seductive power of music is dangerous. Music bypasses the intellect, taking a direct avenue into the organ of emotion. Music is not dangerous for this reason alone. But remember that you can put words to music. Like soaking poison into fruit, any dipshit with a guitar and a promoter can pollute our minds with day-old tripe delivered in a delicious elixir of melody. Hello, System of a (Douchebag).

**I've read several times, from several credible sources, that one's degree of happiness is a fixed value encoded into the brain, such that temporary fluctuations in mood (e.g., winning the lottery, splitting with a girlfriend, acing a test or catching a sharp blow to the marbles) will regress to the predetermined set point. According to peer-reviewed, scientific research, we all have a "happiness thermostat" that remains remarkably consistent throughout our lives. This, I'm afraid, may be true. Furthermore, I believe that we intuit this fact. And this intuition -- that despite our efforts, we're only going to be so happy -- gives rise to our obsessions, fears, anger, anxiety and depression. We panic. We anguish and toil. We endeavor to do a thousand different things to prove this suspicion wrong: everything from chasing material possessions to building careers to searching for love to drinking and drugs; whatever we hope may permanently tweak the thermostat higher. We're all running from the nagging suspicion that it doesn't matter what we do.

**"Psychology" is the the study of the slimy, opaque goo between intellect and emotion. I realized this tonight when I feared a monster would suddenly appear on the other side of my bay window while pouring myself a soda. By the way, I'm in my mid-30s. I'm still afraid of monsters, ghosts and sundry bogeymen. This isn't a joke. On a bad night I'm still afraid of the dark. These irrational fears happen so often I don't find them unusual. But tonight it struck me peculiar that I could know -- know intellectually, beyond a trace of doubt -- that no such monsters exist - and yet still feel fear, even panic.

The facts of reality are easy to perceive (we all know, for example, that monsters don't exist or that members of the opposite sex don't bite.). Emotions are easy to identify. They're not subtle. For example, we all know when we're angry, frightened, jealous, bored, joyful or ecstatic. Neither thoughts nore emotions are unclear. What is unclear, what is is goddamn near impossible to study, is the mechanics linking the two, that is, intellect and emotion. Psychologists will tell you that one follows the other. Bullcrap! If that were true, psychology wouldn't exist. We wouldn't need psychology. We'd all be perceiving reality accurately and feeling the appropriate emotions. But sometimes emotions zig when they should zag. What we think and what we feel don't jibe. Something bizarre happens in the medium of opaque goo between intellect and emotion. That is what psychology needs to predict and explain. Damn I have to quit smoking ganja.

oldhorse - Naaa, he means that if you go through a lot of crap to try to be a lot happier, you're probably wasting your time. You'll get a temporary spike, but not a shift in the thermostat setting. You're as happy as you're gonna be. NOT a license to be bad, evil, or amoral, unless that's what gives you the temporary jolt of mirth. To each his own.

I'm not sure that the opposite sex does not bite, why the other day I had a lady come in and ask me that if her boyfriend put on a mouth guard before he bit her breast would it leave a bruise. I say I am not sure I have never tried that? I know all the dirt

I'm still scared of the dark & monsters. Until we got our new bed that the box springs are right on the floor and there was no space between the floor at the bed (the perfect spot for the monster under the bed), I would jump in to bed every night. Because I knew something would grab my leg if I didn't. And to this day, I leave a trail of lights on at night. I will turn the hall light on before I shut the dining room light off. Turn the bedroom light on before I turn off the hall light, then I turn on the TV to cast light in the room before shutting the bedroom light off. Then once I'm in bed with the covers tucked around my, my husband can turn the TV off. I have an overactive imagination.

We still need to study psychology, because although there is logic in the workings of the mind, the combination of factors that affect one's state of mind and one's behavior are so numerous and varied that the paths are more like a plate of spaghetti than a straight and logical line. Thats why no two people are alike. Not that anyone is going to figure it all out, but its fascinating to explore. My degree is in psychology.

"Courts spend a lot of time and energy considering whether something is offensive without first considering whether it's true. If it's true, it shouldn't matter whether it's offensive. If it does, we've got an ugly future coming down the pike."

Welcome to our feminized future. You can't tell your girlfriend that her butt does indeed look fat in those jeans even though it's true because she will find the truth offensive and go apeshit on your ass. And now that our courts and government are controlled by estrogen-fueled politics the truth is banned there, too. If any woman, or Rosie O'Donnell, might possibly find anything offensive then it is banned. But only for you and me. She can still say or do it.

All that's required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Feminism argues that there are no good men and then writes this view into the laws.

WTF with the post above me????? You may have to consider engaging that stupid word verification tool... (Although, some of the links aren't bad. I clicked on a few of them, and can't say that they weren't worth a few minutes of my time.)

I'm kind of with you on the fear of monsters thing. I'm not really scared of monsters, per se, but when I'm alone in the dark, I am quite aware of the fact that some potential rapist or burglar could leap out from behind the curtains or the closet door at any time. What exactly does that say about my psyche?

Kill the monsters! Make belive or not. I do the same thing. I even go so far as to imagine scenarios. The other day I just knew teh bogeyman was going to ring my doorbell, wait for me to come to the door and then kill me. I thought about where I could run to in order to get time to call the police...nowhere. So I will probably not be answering my door for a while.

I agree with a fellow blogger above about overactive imaginations. Its kind of like thinking you're significant other is cheating on you even though they spend every waking moment with you and call you 27 times a day. You know they aren't cheating but you can still convince yourself otherwise. You KNOW monsters don't exist but if you let your mind settle on it for more than 5 seconds, you're a goner. Monsters sometimes lurk behind my shower curtain too.

And isn't a "man's lady" a "guy's girl"? You know, the kind that watches sports, swears and drinks beer?

I used to be scared of random alien abductions in the middle of the night because of that dammed movie Communion with Christopher Walken but then I realized being abducted might be fun but I'm still scared of anal probes.

I just love this post. Everything about it. And amen to the courts thing, and the monsters out the window thing. I am 30 and I still casually glance about for monsters every so often. Those vampires are especially stealthy.

I saw The Exorcism of Emily Rose where everything bad that happened, happened at the magic witching hour of 3:00 am. Now I REFUSE to go to the bathroom at 3:00 am or 3:30 am (I think even the ghouls run a little late sometimes.) Seriously. I will pee on the bed if I have to because hellooo. Wet Sheets vs. the half dead girl crawling its way up my stairs in the dead of the night??Its a no brainer....